This week on “The Boys,” we finally got to see the “hero” Lamplighter in action, and along with all that violence there was no doubt also a little familiarity for a lot of viewers. That’s because he’s played by Shawn Ashmore, best known for starring as Bobby Drake — AKA Iceman — in the “X-Men” movie franchise.
Lamplighter has the ability to manipulate fire, which he uses in the latest episode the Amazon Prime Video series to do a lot of uh, really bad things (including, in flashback, to Colonel Mallory’s grandchildren). And of course, Iceman (as his superhero code name suggests) has the power to manipulate ice. So they have exact opposite power sets, which brings us to the most pressing question: Which of Ashmore’s elemental-based super-beings would win if they had to fight it out?
For the answer, we turned to the expert himself:
“Look, honestly, I think that Iceman would win,” Ashmore told TheWrap. “I think that he would. But I’ll say this, I think Lamplighter would fight dirtier. So maybe that gives Lamplighter the edge, I’m not sure. Just sheer abilities and powers though, I think that Iceman would win. But maybe Lamplighter would be sneaky and maybe win.”
We’re inclined to side with Ashmore on this one. After all, as far as we know, Lamplighter needs an open flame in order to use his powers, but Iceman can literally just create solid ice from moisture in the air, turn his whole body into ice, and even pull off some high-speed travel by creating what amounts to a frozen conveyor belt in front of him. Plus, unlike Lamplighter, Iceman is just a really nice guy and we’d kind of prefer he win, on principle.
Then again, Ashmore is correct that Lamplighter would most definitely cheat. And as “The Boys” makes clear again and again, that, plus being backed by a megacorp with endless funding and political connections, tends to work almost every time.